Spez has been laser focused on trying to make reddit profitable
His actions speak like he hired some kind of machiavellian ham fisted axe wielding corporate consultants to make that happen
...but at the same time, Spez also want to fully control the main political narrative on Reddit as another revenue stream
My theory is that Reddit is being run incompetently, without good strategy. The problem is it’s too big to fail so whatever it does seems mysterious only
I'm pretty sure they're just going after advertising on the front and data sales/AI on the back end. It's inherently difficult to monetize an old-school internet forum, especially one like Reddit where the incumbent user base is vehemently opposed to adverts and in strong favor of privacy. I don't think they're too big to fail (cough Digg), they're just popular and people dislike change. But I do think they're barking up the wrong tree with their userbase.
The current account I have dates to 2015 before they required email, and they'll get a throwaway before I give them one of my real ones. But even then, whatever, I've really only gone back there maybe once a week for the past few years.
That is pretty much what I believe is going on, but today I got a bit suspicious, especially around the karma concept and them leading users to certain subs. That seems more intentional.
Yea, they might be incompetent while still fully implementing bad ideas
In /r/privacy they started implementing the new social credit system where not only do you need karma, you need fresh karma, called a "Contributor Quantity Score." So my usual aged, pop in every few months account with decent karma is effectively banned for being (actual term) "lowest value" because I'm not on Reddit commenting every day.
As for their plans, seems like a probability where they just want us to pay $5.99 a month to make the problem (they created) go away.
Ahaa this makes sense. But they are not advertising that a premium account offers anything in that regard just yet. Unless I haven’t seen it. So they’re overpopulated and looking to improve engagement, if one looked at it in a positive light.
The plan? Enshittification.
Same as Facebook and Google. Sell all the data they collect on you to whoever will buy it. It’s advertising start to finish, top to bottom.
And, whatever isn’t advertising is part of the surveillance state. Palantir and Peter Theil get to look over your colonoscopy results while they decide whether or not your social credit score has fallen low enough to revoke your citizenship.
I’m so screwed. But they will be pleased to know my colonoscopy showed a very clear ileum.
The unfortunate point of a business is to get people hooked, kill competition, increase profits through enshitification, declare bankrupcy, sell/close company. The goal is that people up top make tons of money. Reddit is in the enshitification stage. They don't care that people are leaving because the suits are making money.
It's the same phenomenon as every company that is publicly owned (or aspiring to be)--their only concern is the apparent value of the company. Not the value or quality of the actual product or service, just the stock market value.
Stock market values are based on profitability. There are two ways to increase profitability: increase revenue, and decrease costs. Increasing revenue is hard, especially with social media companies (they cost a lot for how much ad revenue brings in, which is partly why they all sell your data--to increase revenue).
Decreasing costs in the short term is much easier. Fire 25% of the staff, you've just increased profitability by a huge margin, and you get a raise. But wouldn't that lower the quality of the product? Naw, we'll just replace people with AI, who will do a perfectly adequate job. Besides, who the hell cares? It's not like the product matters, it's the numbers!
It's called enshittification.
There’s that word again Enshittification, what a fine addition to the English language. Yeah it’s amazing how the lure of big money changes one’s principles, like that hipster coffee roaster that threw you out for asking for a sugar. Now worth a few billy in the instant coffee trade.
If we're truing to look into some sort of conspiracy here, I would propose another one.
Reddit is at the forefront of "dead Internet". Now being a paid data provider for AI scrapers, it's in Reddit's interest to generate as much data as possible at as little expense (i.e. servicing actual users) as possible.
At the same time, they need to show that data is user-generated, so they keep registering users - they just ban them later under any made up reason to not spend resources on them.
As a result - data flows, users think being banned is their fault, and no one can prove for sure Reddit is a dead trove of AI data, providing them with plausible deniability to keep on going and racking profits for minimal expense.
This is the stuff I was craving. Have you thought about this before?
For a while, yeah
My best guess, is that whatever plan they had, failed. They will have a backup plan, which will also fail, and maybe they will try to cash in by being bought by another social media. Would not surprise me if they sold to X, since that's the direction reddit is going.
Hearing ideas like this is exactly why I posted this. Thanks for the contribution, Elon plus Reddit could be interesting…
Good question. Reddit PERMANENTLY BANNED me for these two words: Punch her.
Context? A woman was frustrated with her landlady for fining her $50 for trash that wasn’t trash but was an Amazon package at her apartment door. The advice I gave? Punch her.
Reddit is pure AI slop now, it has to be.
Yes that has to be proof that it’s automated( not sure if that’s official knowledge?) but that’s pretty ridiculous. I wonder if you said Punch him, would the result have been any different?
I have yet to see an "idk why I was banned" that wasn't either blatant bad-faith engagement or flat out lying about the event. I don't think that actually happens very often at all.
It happened to me, so i tried to find out if it has happened to anyone else, found a lot of people. Naturally there will be lies mixed in there but, I saw it first hand. When you’re bored do a bit of searching, it’s seems to be common. As i believe there has been some automation added to the process.
I’ve been working to delete all my stuff on a banned Reddit account before I delete it. Most of my accounts are done except for two. One I can’t get into for some reason. The other is my main and it keeps lying about or hiding my posts so I can’t get to all of them and delete them. I have tampermonkey scripts that have been running for days and there’s STILL shit that keeps reappearing after reddit pretends to delete it.
You don’t get to keep my content AND ban me from using your platform. I’ll just keep whacking away at it until it’s dead but fuck it’s this a needlessly complicated pain in the ass.
you know bain capital and toys r us?
basically that
I only know toys r us. But I get the picture. So, did Reddit gain a new investor? Officially? I’m not clued up on the inner workings
no i just meant they're destroying it
Do you know how use of AI changes how you think? They want to train people on AIs.
white supramacy, federal agents
Charging people to be unbanned would not be a smart move.
They're just incompetent, there's no conspiracy.
I got ridiculed for talking about how you have to keep a conveyor belt of multiple accounts baking and ready to go (age, karma, post history). A thing that was once normally accepted mode of operation on reddit. Now the perspective has inverted. Reddit has managed to pivot itselt 180 degrees to a different class of internet user. They are totally naive though just as self-righteous as older reddit users.
Apparently now that MO is considered chronically online basement dweller behavior. I know it's not that deep. The newer reddit users are largely there for low brow entertainment. Including harassment/mockery/ridicule of any reddit user they find that is different from them.
They use reddit by scrolling their phone chasing dopamine hits. It's reddits version of the slot machine mechanics that just about every facet of the tech world has been implementing in their own way.
As for the "why was I banned" shenanigans. I think it's mostly automated trip wires every where. It's rats nest of it. Second to that is bad actors gaming it. That's a whole rant in itself.
The newer reddit users are technologically illiterate. They have no idea about bans or shadow bans. They'll keep engaging even though their activity is going into a shadowban blackhole.
At some point they l announce that paying for a Reddit premium account allows you to be unbanned and free to do whatever you want.
What other reasons or ideas can you think of, that mass banning users, (some with years of age and contributions, some of them mods.) could be the first step in a plan to capitalize.
To me it seems like it's a consequence of both cost cutting moderators and lowering the threshold for bans to make the plaform more appealing to large companies advertising.
Nah. Powertripping mods explain bans.
Even here on Lemmy you heard about unjustified bans all the time.
I was ready to quit Reddit before I got banned. Honestly it was a welcomed divorce.
I miss what Reddit used to be. It was great. But in the end it was just so so so bad. Some of the subreddit were as bad as kiwifarms, and others were terrified of becoming like that so they overcorrected and it became a platform of extremes.
Facebook is a right wing cesspool. It doesn’t matter what you set your preferences to, you are getting right wing propaganda and you are going to like it. I killed that account.
Honestly, even running away from for profit operations might not be enough soon. We’ll all be on fucking ramble using i2p soon enough.
My guess would be that the banning are just part of an automated process. If you believe they’re seemingly random.
So I guess my question should have encouraged more of the imagination. What could they be doing , if they weren’t doing the seemingly obvious.
I accused them of that in a message to clarify my ban reason which wasn't covered in the rule they cited and they just replied with the usual form reply and then at the bottom was something like this was not an automated decision. Well someone sure has their finger on the button then because it took all of 0.5sec after my comment. I believe there have been filters put in place that automatically ban people for speaking ill of the president.
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